


O Soul, I Said, Have You No Tears?

by inexplicifics



Series: The Accidental Warlord and His Pack [7]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Character Study, Child Death, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Minor Character Death, The Witcher Trials Are Horrific, Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24041545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexplicifics/pseuds/inexplicifics
Summary: Many years ago, Vesemir was chosen to be the chief trainer for the Wolf School. He's very good at it. He hates doing it. And he knows this is the way things always have been and always will be...Or is it?
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Vesemir
Series: The Accidental Warlord and His Pack [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683661
Comments: 190
Kudos: 2933
Collections: Good Relationship Etiquette (familial included) - or Good BDSM Etiquette - or Good Relationship and BDSM Etiquette





	O Soul, I Said, Have You No Tears?

Vesemir is very proud to have been chosen to be one of the trainers for the Wolf School. He is good at training, and excels at molding young Witchers into the mighty warriors they must become.

Vesemir hates training young Witchers.

Both of these statements are true.

He’s _good_ at it, and the students he trains have a notably higher success rate in the Trial of the Mountains, and a higher survival rate on the Path. He has a knack for balancing sternness and warmth, harshness and mercy, that makes the boys want to do their best, want to live up to his expectations. He is neither too lenient nor too cruel; he pushes the boys to their utmost limits but never beyond.

He loves them, though he will never admit it aloud - buries the emotion so deep that it’s not even hinted at in his scent. Every one of them, brave and scared and hurting, the ones who weep and the ones who fight and the ones who attempt to run. He is their father and their teacher and nearly their god - how can he help but love them?

And seven in every ten of them die screaming on the stone tables, strapped down and helpless as the grasses burn through their veins.

Vesemir believes that Witchers are necessary. That the service they provide is _vital_ to the continued survival of the people of the continent. There must be Witchers, so they must be trained; and if they must be trained, they must be trained _well_ , to become as skilled and as ethical as possible, so that when they go out on the Path, they are deadly and yet not vicious, fierce and yet not berserk, mercenary and yet not willing to kill men for coin. He knows that he is the finest of the trainers available, and he can hardly do less than serve in this way.

And half of the boys die in their first year on the Path.

Vesemir keeps very good notes, a journal for every year - has done so since he was a boy just setting out on his own Path. The stack of journals is quite remarkable by now. Every year he writes down the names of the new trainees, and every year he notes down, in careful precise letters, the ones who die. _Piotr, fell from the wall and broke his skull. Oskar, left the training hike and was devoured by a wyvern. Bartosz, died in the Trial of the Grasses. Michal, died in the Trial of the Grasses. Natan, died in the Trial of the Grasses. Stanislaw, killed by Speartip. Wiktor, died in the Trial of the Mountains. Fabian, killed by Speartip. Leon. Dominik. Kamil. Patryk._ On and on and on.

But this is the way it is, the way it has always been since the Witchers were first created. Vesemir isn’t quite old enough to have been one of the first batch, the ones who were purely experiments on the parts of their mage-creators, but he’s old enough to have been taught by them. This is how it has always been, and how it will always be.

*

He knows Geralt is something special from the day the boy is brought to Kaer Morhen, far younger than most trainees usually are. Not because of any physical traits - the Trials make all Witchers so far beyond ordinary men that their original strength and speed is almost irrelevant - but because of something Vesemir can’t even name. Call it heart, or maybe soul. It only gets stronger when Geralt meets Eskel; Vesemir has seen a lot of close friendships among the trainees, but never anything quite like the two of them. They seem to communicate without speaking, half the time; when they spar, it’s a thing of beauty, the two of them striking and blocking and whirling around each other as though it’s a dance and not a fight.

If one of them dies during the Trials, Vesemir’s genuinely worried the other will too, just from sheer grief. Vesemir watches them and feels like he’s started grieving already. Three chances in ten that either will survive.

They both survive.

And then Geralt is taken for additional Trials.

Vesemir paces between the room where Eskel lies unconscious, recovering from the Trials, and the room where Geralt lies screaming as the extra mutagens burn through his veins. Eskel does not wake. Geralt does not die.

Vesemir writes many names in his journal that week, but not Eskel’s, not Gweld’s, not Gascaden’s. Not Geralt’s.

He doesn’t pray, because no god cares about Witchers. But he is grateful nonetheless.

*

Geralt and Eskel go out on their Paths, and Vesemir does his duty. He trains more boys; he writes more names in his journals; he grieves and buries his grief and goes on. Witchers go out in the spring; Witchers return in early winter, always fewer than there were. The trainees swear and bleed and strive and - often, too often - die.

Some years, when it gets to be too much, Vesemir takes a leave of absence, goes out on the Path, comes back with a few more scars, a few more stories. Loses a few more brothers. He’s one of the only ones left of those who trained with him, now - his year, and the three above, and the four below, there’s only him and Rennes left. Witchers don’t generally grow old.

 _A Witcher dies with his sword in his hand_ , he teaches the trainees, and sends them out, and some of them come back, and he writes their names in his journal, and knows he is the only one who bothers to remember them. Sometimes he goes and re-reads his old journals, from decades past, and it hurts somewhere deep in his chest when he sees the names and cannot recall the faces. _Bartok, killed by Speartip_. Was Bartok dark-haired or fair? _Mercin, died in the Trials_. Did Mercin have blue eyes, or brown?

Does it matter?

Even old Barmin, who cares almost as much as Vesemir does, doesn’t bother to remember the boys who die before they even become Witchers. The ones who die in their first year on the Path, yes, those he remembers, but why bother remembering human boys too weak to survive their Trials?

Vesemir can’t really explain why he bothers to write down their names, their dates of death, the enemies which slew them. He doesn’t tell anyone, doesn’t mention it during the meetings to go over how successful the most recent set of Trials were, how many new-trained Witchers survived their first year on the Path, how many boys have been brought in, shaky-kneed and wide-eyed, to be broken and remade.

The years march on, and the boys come in, and three in ten of them survive long enough to venture out onto the Path, and Vesemir buries his love and his grief so deeply that sometimes even _he_ believes that he is made of the dark stone of the mountains, cold and hard and utterly unfeeling.

*

And then Geralt comes to Kaer Morhen one winter with a question: _what about the monsters who are also men?_

Witchers kill monsters. That’s what they’re _for_. No one can argue with that.

Some monsters are men - some men are monsters. That’s also utterly inarguable.

No one has taken out a _contract_ on the monstrous men of the world, though, and that’s the sticking point.

The debates rage on into the winter, and Vesemir stays out of them at first. He listens, and he watches, and he sees the fire that Geralt has always had burning brighter and brighter, righteous rage like a bonfire. Sees Eskel always at his dearer-than-brother’s side, faithful and steady and _fierce_. Sees the way Geralt’s argument seems to light something in many of the Wolves - some long-dormant spark, smothered by years of pain, dampened by every curse spat at their heels and coin shorted from their pay, coming alive again now at the idea that they could be more than reviled mercenaries. Could make a difference in the world that _lasts_.

It’s that, in the end, that sways Vesemir. The idea that the boys he sends out on the Path, who die and are forgotten, killing monsters that are replaced with other monsters almost before their corpses are decayed, might - might make a true difference before they die. The idea that he can promise the children who know that seven in ten of them will die in the Trials that if they _live_ , there’s something more than a life of pain and misery ahead of them.

When the Wolf School votes on whether to follow Geralt or continue the way they’ve always been, Vesemir votes last, and he knows as he rises that Geralt and Eskel and the Witchers clustered behind them, the ones who dare to hope for something more, are sure he’ll vote against them. Will put the full weight of his reputation, the respect every Witcher he’s ever trained holds for him, on the side of tradition.

If he does, he knows, tradition will carry the day.

Vesemir weighs his words carefully, looking around the long hall to catch every pair of cat-slitted eyes. Looks past the Witchers to the trainees, pressed against the wall, watching their future be decided.

Thinks, _Let their deaths be worth something_ , and does not know if he means the trainees staring at him in tense anticipation or the ranked shades of his dead, name after name scratched down in faded journals, forgotten by everyone but him.

“Witchers kill monsters,” he says firmly. “It is what we are made to do. Geralt has identified a type of monster we have not previously hunted.” He turns and inclines his head to Geralt, just a little. “Lead us in this new hunt, White Wolf.”

*

The world changes. It is often baffling, frequently dangerous, always new and startling.

Vesemir never, in all his long years, regrets those words.

He still writes down the names of the dead. But now, there are so many fewer names - and when they fall, he is not the only one who cares.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] O Soul, I Said, Have You No Tears?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24186952) by [AceOfTigers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceOfTigers/pseuds/AceOfTigers)




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